1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to management of electronic records, and more specifically to a method and apparatus facilitating a sender of email communications to specify policies with which the email communication are to be managed as a record.
2. Related Art
Electronic mail communications (Emails) are often used for communicating a desired content/message. In a common scenario, a user generally uses a convenient interface such as a web-browser or email client system to compose the content of interest and send the composed content to desired recipients in the form of a email communication.
In general, an email communication, as transmitted to a recipient, contains various portions such as a header (specifying the information on the sender, the recipients, priority, the route the email has taken thus far, etc.), a body containing the composed content which the sender wishes to send, any files specified as attachments, and a signature identifying the sender.
There is often a need to manage a record of email communications. Managing a record generally entails preserving a copy of the email communication. The records may be maintained electronically, in which case the preserved record is referred to as an electronic record. Such maintenance of records is often necessitated by regulatory policies implemented by the Government, by the industry or even the organization of the sender/recipient.
Records are often maintained consistent with associated policies. Policies generally specify aspects such as the duration of retention of the record, the security level to be accorded the record during retention, the medium/location at which the record is to be maintained, the disposition (e.g., when the record can be destroyed) of the records, etc.
According to one prior approach, the policies for each electronic record are pre-specified on a server system, which manages the records. The policies may in turn be set according to various (combination of) considerations such as the folder/directory in which the email is eventually stored, the sender email address, and recipient email address.
One problem with the prior approach of above is that the sender of email may not have a desired level of control over the record management policies, particularly for each email communication. It may be desirable for the sender to have more control (e.g., specify policies associated with each email communication) over the policies in several environments.
In the drawings, like reference numbers generally indicate identical, functionally similar, and/or structurally similar elements. The drawing in which an element first appears is indicated by the leftmost digit(s) in the corresponding reference number.